'Nasty button pressed': Nicolle Wallace mocks triggered Trump after TACO joke
At the top of her Thursday show, MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace showed the clip of President Donald Trump snapping at a reporter who asked him about the new "TACO trade" nickname he's earned.
Financial Times commentator Robert Armstrong invented the joke in his newsletter. TACO stands for "Trump always chickens out," and refers largely to the trade war.
Trump snapped at the reporter, saying, "And you ask a nasty question like that!"
"Oh! She got the nasty, nasty button-pressed," said Wallace. "Chicken out, defined there by Donald Trump publicly for the first time. Trump blocked by the courts, shocked by the markets, and mocked by Wall Street analysts is where we start today."
Wallace's guest Armstrong told Trump that one of his concerns is that the TACO joke was a good thing, because he backed off of destructive tariffs. His fear is that Trump's humiliation means he will no longer back down, and that's bad for the American economy.
"I meant to make a joke, not cause a recession," Armstrong told Wallace. "He's the president! I'm an inky-finger hack making a dumb joke! I'm the one who's supposed to behave carefully around the president of the United States? How did we get here? I mean, the situation is — bizarre doesn't even begin to cover it, as far as I'm concerned."
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He commented on the "serious question about" living in "a world in which you're not allowed to make fun of the president."
"Look, the reason the TACO trade joke, which is kind of a dumb joke, stuck, is because it has this huge element of truth in it," he explained. "And yes, a lot of times in the last, you know, 12 or 18 hours since that conversation in the White House, people have either written me or mentioned me on social media saying, this guy's dumb joke is going to cause a recession. And I don't like that at all. I meant to make a joke, not cause a recession."
Charlotte Howard, executive editor of The Economist, recalled a "boiling" Trump who was forced to listen as President Barack Obama excoriated him at the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2011. It infuriated Trump enough to inspire his bid for the presidency.
"He does detest being mocked," Howard told Wallace.
"The fact that we're having that conversation points to this weird environment in which, you know, some people seem to be treating Trump like a senile uncle who needs to be appeased," she added.
However, Wallace argued, "No one is humiliating Donald Trump except Donald Trump."
See the clip below or at the link here.
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